Square Enix’s Left Alive is one of those games you hear about but then quickly thereafter forget about because it sounds like that poorly made Ubisoft game from 2012, I Am Alive. However, it’s a fairly different game insofar that it’s much more akin to Ubisoft’s The Division than the faux survival game from seven years ago.

Anyway, Square released a 14 minute gameplay trailer highlighting some of the new content and gameplay features within the upcoming title, which is due out on march 5th, 2019.

You can get a glimpse of what Left Alive looks like in action with the video below.

The video starts with the character stealthily moving through the courtyard, using the conveniently placed boxes as cover as they craft new gear and use it to disrupt the enemies and create a distraction in order to avoid being spotted.

The music, the pacing, the UI, and the movement is eerily similar to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

After crafting some items that are used as a distraction, the main character makes his way across a fiery battlefield and toward his main destination inside of a dark and blandly designed building.

The main character – who looks a lot like Sting from The Police, meets up with a decent looking chick, where he explains that he’s been framed.

The lip-synching looks pretty bad, but the voice acting is better than what the animation affords.

During the cinematic players will have a choice in the dialogue sequence that allows you to change the outcome of the encounter.

After another weird cinematic between two characters, we get some more gameplay, which features a separate character lobbing fire at idiotic AI while taking them out with an automatic pistol.

So there’s a couple of things I need to address here: First of all, what’s the purpose of making the stealth items and options so much more complex and convoluted to use when it’s just easier to kill the bad guys by running and gunning your way through them?

Second of all, why are there so many different menu layers when the AI is as idiotic as it is? During the shootouts the bad guys just stand there in the open and they don’t even run, hide, or dynamically make use of cover. They just stand there like retards. It completely defeats the purpose of having to use tactics.

And lastly, why would the team copy all the worst parts of Metal Gear Solid instead of the best parts? The whole lure of the gameplay of Kojima’s title is that the AI was challenging and the tactical parts of the espionage actually required you to use tactics.

I wasn’t the only one who realized that the game seems kind of unpolished, a little overwrought, and under-developed. Plenty of people in the YouTube comment section were also less than impressed with what they saw, with the like/dislike ratio almost being evened out.

The game partially attempts to pick up when the metrosexual soldier gleefully hops into a Wanzer – which sounds like a panzer that wanks its way through battle – but before anything cool happens the developers decided to turn the game into a low-rent version of Front Mission, where the punches have no impact, and the weapons feel like hitscan JPG effect launchers. But even that wasn’t enough to stop gamers from thinking the overall feel was janky and unfinished.

Anyway, the game isn’t looking too hot right now. I don’t know how they’re going to fix it up for release, but it’s just a couple of weeks out from landing on PS4 and Steam. Based on what they’ve showcased so far it looks like a dud in the making, but what are your thoughts?

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Billy has been rustling Jimmies for years covering video games, technology and digital trends within the electronics entertainment space. The GJP cried and their tears became his milkshake. Need to get in touch? Try the Contact Page.